Assad loyalists kill three in Syria after Friday prayers

AMMAN — Forces loyal to Syria’s president Bashar al-Assad killed three protesters after Friday prayers in eastern and southern towns, activists said, as demonstrations flared, buoyed by the demise of Muammar Gaddafi’s power in Libya.

Assad has sent in tanks and security forces to crush months of demonstrations by activists calling for an end to his family’s 41-year rule, witnesses have reported.

A resident of Deir al-Zor said security forces opened fire to disperse scores of protesters, killing two of them. He named them as 26-year-old Marii Fathi and 22-year-old Oday Bahloul.

“The was shooting in Kanama Street near Jandol cafe and a white security van took their bodies,” he said, adding that another youth, Ibrahim Mohammad al-Dukhoul, was taken to hospital with serious gunshot wounds.

In Nawa, a town in the southern Hauran Plain that has seen regular protests, residents and activists said one protester was killed after forces loyal to Assad shot at demonstrators coming out of a mosque.

Syria’s government has blamed armed “terrorist groups” for the street violence and says it wants to restore order.

State television said two gunmen were killed in Deir al-Zor, capital of a tribal province bordering Iraq, after they fired at a checkpoint, wounding three security officers.

Syrian authorities have expelled most independent journalists since the uprising erupted in March, making it difficult to verify events on the ground.

Other activists and residents reported protests in the cities of Hama and Homs along the main highway leading to Turkey, in districts of the capital Damascus and its suburbs, and in the southern city of Deraa where the uprising against Assad erupted in March.

“Gaddafi is gone, it is your turn Bashar!” shouted protesters in the town of Hirak northeast of Deraa, encouraged by the apparent overthrow of the Libyan strongman by rebels this week, according to a witness who spoke by phone.

In the town of Kisweh, south of Damascus and home to refugees from the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, YouTube footage showed protesters carrying placards reading “Take heed from what happened to others.”

Qatar’s Emir Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani said protesters in Syria were unlikely to back down from their demands for more representation, state news agency QNA reported on Friday. The agency said he had encouraged Syria to take more decisive steps toward reform. “Everybody knows that the security solution has failed and it doesn’t seem that the Syrian people will back down from their demands,” he was quoted as saying during a trip to Tehran where he met Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Ahmadinejad is seen as Assad’s ally.

Activists earlier said security forces killed eight people across Syria overnight, mostly as a result of attacks on street demonstrations.

Any power shakeup in Syria would have major regional repercussions. Assad, from Syria’s minority Alawite sect, still has alliances with the country’s influential Sunni business class and a loyalist core in the army and security service.

In an interview with state television broadcast on Sunday, Assad said he was responding to armed unrest and that he would not bow to Western pressure because “reform for colonialist states in the West means to offer them all what they want and sell out all rights.”

Adib Shishakli, the dissident grandson of one of Syria’s earliest presidents, told Reuters from Istanbul: “The best response to Assad is the peaceful street protests we are seeing as another Arab autocrat falls in Libya.”

The uprising has damaged Syria’s economy, hitting investment and tourist numbers. Businesses have been laying off workers while Western powers have stepped up sanctions on the Assad family and some of its business partners.

European Union diplomats said on Wednesday the bloc’s governments were likely to impose an embargo on imports of Syrian oil by the end of next week, although new sanctions may be less stringent than those imposed by Washington.

Since Ramadan began on Aug. 1, tanks have entered the cities of Hama, scene of a 1982 massacre by the military, Deir al-Zor and Latakia on the Mediterranean coast.